ENGLAND'S TREATMENT OF IRELAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XV, Issue 26, 21 October 1887, Page 3

ENGLAND'S TREATMENT OF IRELAND.

(A paper read before the Irish National League at Wanganui by Mr. W. Bunting.) ' " We've wept till our faces are pale and wan. We've knelt to a throne till our strength is gone ; We've prayed to our masters, but one by one They laughed to scorn onr suffering land ; And sent forth their minions with cannon and steel, Swearing with fierce unholy zeal To trample us down with an iron heel If we dared but to murmur our just demand." — Lady Wilde. " The history of Ireland's unhappy connection with England," says a distinguished American writer, Mr. James K. Paulding, " exhibits from first to last a detail of the most persevering, galling, grinding insulting, and systematic oppression to be found anywhere, except among the heloti of Sparta. There is not a national feeling that has not been insulted and trodden under foot ; a national right that has not been withheld, nntil fear forced it from the grasp of England ; or a dear or ancient prejudice that has not been violated in that abused country. As Christians the people of Ireland have been denied, under penalties and disqualifications, the exercise of the rites of the Catholic religion, venerable for its antiquity, admirable for its unity, and consecrated by the belief of some of the best men that ever breathed. As men they have been deprived of the common rights of British subjects, under the pretext that they were incapable of enjoying them, which pretext they had no other foundation for than resistance of oppression, only the more severe by being sanctioned by the laws! England first denied them the means of improvement, and then insulted them with the imputation of barbarism." Anyone who reads the history of Ireland will be powerfully struck with the one all-prominent fact of " Ireland's indestructible vitality." Under circumstances where any other people would have succumbed for ever, where any other nation would have resigned itself to subjugation and accepted death, the Irish nation scorns to yield, and refuses to die. It survived the four centuries of war from the second to the eighth Henry of England. It survived the exterminations of Elizabeth by which Froude has been so profoundly appalled. It survived the butcheries of Cromwell and the merciless persecution of the penal times, and the bloody policy of '98. Confiscations such as are to be found in the history of do other country in Europe, again and again tore up society by the roots in Ireland, trampling the noble and the gentle into poverty and obscurity. The mind was sought to be quenched, the intellect extinguished, the manners debased and brutified. " The perverted ingenuity of man" could no further go in the untiring endeavour to kill all our aspirations for freedom, and all instincts of nationality, in the Irish breast, yet this indestructible nation has risen under the blows of her murderous persecutors, triumphant and immortal. She has survived even England's most deadly blow, designed to be the final stroke — the Union— as she will assuredly survive the " Manitoba and manaclei " policy of the Salisbury Government of to-day.

In the beginning of the seventeenth century the Irish abroad, " Ireland in Exile," are first heard of as a distinct political element. The new power thus born into the world was fated to perform a great aud marvellous part in the designs of Providence. It has endured through the shock of centuries, has outlived the rise and fall of dynasties and states, has grown into gigantic size and shape ; and in the influences it exercises at this moment on the course and policy of England, affords, perhaps, ihe most remarkable illustration recorded outside Holy Writ, of the inevitability of retributive justice.

thrns T t° SEI tt 66 > pe ° ple f Ireland from their own country, and Sfay "^ " th \ p i°? inco of M °M'<*. in tbe reign of Q°S Elizabeth, and prosecuted in the following reign by Kins James tho Sif. U S* 1I 't"" bea "" f " l «"'Jill*tedMa?yQ™een oi tots, namely, the erpotaoji of tbe native Irish race, and the •• plant. their destiny as the Heraclidae of modern history. They reserve to day all over the world their individuality as markedly as the children of Israel did theirs in Babylon or in Ecy DD ™ * 7 It was not until the cloße of the sixteenth century, or more than four hundred years after Henry the Second's laSng in Ireland that the struggle of native Irish sovreignty against English ru le SSSfhfff the tacit surrender of Ireland to James I. During the latter half of the last century of the above period, a new element of marks eacn with a separate individuality. With the reign of Tames L began the political system which with little variation still eSts kV^LT 011 ° f d Under ° ne crown with Scotland and Eoglan? SS vhi • 1D^ by succeßßion the Scottish kmg, andfby a remarkable coincidence or concurrent TrrfanA of +1, " /• virtually surrendered to t^SS^^?s£A^\^ from a race kindred to its own. Throughout the whole Stuart period, from 1600 to 1700, the national feeling and action o tlSZt with a loyalty fatal to Irish welfare, were displayed on the 81 de of Hshß^S hUS "*&?& I* the of the Eng lish Republicans against the duplicity of Charles 1., as well as in the still more successful English revolt against James ll the lrish remained steadfast to the loyalist cause, and in the resu t paid a dreadf u penalty for such disastroua fidelity. The soil of the country was declared forfeit by the existing owners, and was parcelled out as spoil among the soldiery of the Cromwellian andwfS armies; hundreds of thousands of acres were bestowed on the m 7. tresses court favourites, and natural offspring of wflliam and the" early Hanoverian princes, while the native pentry Sared and homeless were banished and proscribed, and the general body of the people reduced to a condition little short of outlawry 7 (mn ™ F*°™»ce of Ulster was parcelled out into lots and divided among court favourites and clamouring "undertakers," the owners and occupiers-.the native inhabitants-being as little regarded althew^d grouse on he hills. The guilder trade companiesof London.got a Tast 5 tLn^ c?e ?' 8 T% hin £ like 110 ' 000 acres of the richtt lands of the O Neils' and the O'Donnells'.lands which the said London companies hold to this day. To encourage and maintain these •« plan" %nni f "Tv! 18 P™ I .^ B were conferred upon, or offered to the " colonists, ' the condttions required of them on the other hand Seine simply to exclude or kill off the owners, to hunt down the nattvf population as they would any other wild game. For two hundrll years ,of history we find tha •• colonists » genera ly endowed nuYsed petted, Protected, privileged-the especial care of the EngTish Government whilst the hapless native population were, durine the same ££^TSS*V dead iQ la *>" forbidd ™ to Ude ffrbTddeHo tminlnl £ It ? e \° OW ,V roperty ; for each of which prohibition*anufmany besides to a like intent- Acts of Parliament, "with day and date, word and letter," may be cited. How to extirpate tho H^fT?' b ? W t0 blaSt aDd deSolate the rath r?nan^ should afford sustenance to even a solitary fugitive of the doomed race was tbe constant effort of English military commanders It r a^n4"rrnt^rs State Paper office, is forced to admit that it was not war in even its Sfr--r' P F --Tc^e^mi^l conquests other countries have passed through, and time has either £SJn CODqU f 0 T °[ co ?q uered ' or obliterated all bitterness or hate between them In Ireland the process was woefully different ; so has the product been ; so must it ever be till the laws of nature are SS ce Q d a ° d revolutionised, and grapes grow on thorns and figs on I ,J£* wv T\ n ?£- Wfl /' Which might be gotten on bothside^but murder, which, to this day, is remembered on one side with a terrible r s; ato P» nt r g iD Our own da y> has found the testimony of the State Paper Office too powerful to resist, and with all his natural bias in favour of his own country, his candour as a hiatorian more than Sr »S hl E a^." CCUBer of infamies to which I have been th?2JS.H«.« n g i ? & X OTl ' he 9ay8 ' " was shuddering over tho atrocities of the Duke of Alvr, The children in the nurseries were

being inflamed to patriotic rage and madness by the tales of Spanish tyranny, yet Alva's bloody sword never touched the young, the defenceless, or those whose sem even dogs can recognise and respect. Sir Peter Oarew had been seen murdering women and children and babes that liad scarcely left the breast, but Sir Peter Oarew was not called on to answer for hie conduct, and remained in favour with the Deputy, Gilbert, who, left in command at Kilmallock, was illustrating yet more signally the same tendency; nor was Gilbert a bad man. As times went he passed for a brave and chivalrous gentleman, not the least distinguished in that bigh band of adventurers, who carried the English flag into the western hemisphere, a founder of colonies, an explorer of unknown seas, a man of science, and. above all, a man of special piety . He regarded himself as dealing rather with savage beasts than with human beings, and when he traoked them to their dens, he strangled the cubs and rooted out the entire broods. " The Gilbert method," saya Mr. Proude agaiD, " has this disadvantage, that it must be carried out to tbe last extremity or it ought not to be tried at all. The dead do not come back ; and if the mothers and the babes are slaughtered with the men, the race gives no further trouble, but the work must be done thoroughly ; partial and fitful cruelty lays up only a long debt of deserved and everdeepening hate<" The work on this occasion happening not be " done thoroughly," Mr. Froude immediately proceeds to explain : " In justice to the English soldiers, however, it must be said that it was no fault of theirs if any Irish child of that generation was allowed to live to manhood." The same historian frankly warns his readers against supposing tbat such work was exceptional on the part of the English forces. From the language of the official documents before him, he says, " the inference is but too natural, that work of this kind was the road to preferment, and that this, or something like it, was the ordinary employment of the Saxon garrison in Ireland. Such was the work in which Carew the Second and his garrisons occupied ithemselves on the fall of Kinsale, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Oliver Cromwell, though a despot, a bigot, and a canting hypocrite, was a thorough nationalist as an Englishman, and England owes not a little of her constitutional liberty to the democratic principles with which, the Republican party, on whose shoulders he mounted to power, leavened the nation. In 1649 the Puritan revolution had consumed all opposition in England, bat Ireland presented an inviting field for what the Protector and his soldiery called " the work of the Lord." There their Dassions would be fully aroused, and there their vengeance would have full scope. To pull down the Throne and cut off Charles' head was, after all (according to their ideas)overthrowing only a political tyranny and an episcopal dominance amongst their own fellow-countrymen and fellow- Protestants. But in Ireland there was an idolatrous people to be put to the sword, and their fertile country to be possessed. The bare prospect of a campaign there threw all the Puritan regiments into ecstasies. In this spirit Cromwell came to Ireland, landing in Dublin on the 14th August, 1649. He remained nine months— never, perhaps, in the same space of time had one man more of horror and desolation to show for himself. It is not for any of the ordinary severities of war that Cromwell's name is infamous in Ireland. War t ia no child's play, and those who take to it must not wail if its fair penaltias fall upon them ever so hard and heavy. If Cromwell, therefore, was merely a vigorous and " thorough soldieT." it would have baen unjust to cast special odium upon him. To call him " savage " because the slain of his enemies in battle might have been enormous in amount would be simply contemptible. But it ia for a far different reason Cromwell is execrated in Ireland. It is for snoh butcheries of the unarmed and defenceless non-combatants, the ruthless slaughter of inoffensive women and children, as Drogheda and Wexford witnessed that he is justly regarded as a bloody and brutal tyrant. Bitterly did the Irish people pay for their loyalty to tha English sovereign. I spare myself recital of the horrors of that time, with which you are all, no doubt, familiar, but not even before the terrors of such a man did the Irish exhibit a craven or cowardly spirit. The immortal Owen 800 O'Neill was struck down by death early in the struggle, and by the oommon testimony of friend and foe in him the Irish lost the only military leader capable of coping with Cromwell. Nevertheless, with that courage which unflinchingly looks rain in the face, and chooses death before dishonour, the Irish fought the issue out. At length after a fearful and bloody struggle of nearly three years duration " on the 12th May, 1652, the Leinster army of the Irish surrendered on terms signed at' Kilkenny, which were adopted successively by the other principal armies between that time and September following, when the Ulster forces surrendered." What ensued upon the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, has been told by Mr. John P. Prendergast, in " The Cromwellian settlement of Ireland," the record of a nation's woes, "one of the moat remarkable books ever printed in the English language." The transactions which immediately followed upon the capitulation of the Irish armies, " when," says Mr. Prendergast, " there took place a scene not witnessed in Europe since the conquest of Spain by the Vandals." " Indeed," he continues, "it is injustice to ihe Vandals to equal them with the English of 1652, for the Vandals came ac strangers and conquerors in an age of force and barbarism ; nor did they banish the people, though thay seized and divided their lands by lot, but the English of 1652 were of the same nation as half of the chief families in Ireland, and had at that timo had Ireland under their sway for 500 years. The captains and men-of-war of the Irish, amounting to forty thousand men and upwards., they banished into iSpaiu, where they took service under that King. Others of them with a crowd of, orphan girls, transported to serve the English planters vi the West Indies, and the remnant ot the nation not banished or transported, were to be transplanted into Connaught, while the conquering Army divided the ancient inheritances of the Irish amongst them by lot." The Republican Pciiliament decided to colonise three provinces, Leinster, Muhk>t, and Ulster, converting the fourth (Oonnaught) into a vast encircled prison, into which such of the doomed natives as were not either transported aa wjiite sla7es to Barbadoes, kept for servitude by the new eettlere, or .allowed to expatriate themselves aaa privilege, might

be driven on pain of immediate death; the calculation being that in the desolate tracts assigned as their unsheltered prison they must inevitably perish ere long. The American pcet Longffirf a 8a 8 V" £ c P ° em Of " Ev angeline," immortalised the story of Acadia. How many a heart has melted into pity ; how many an eye has filled with tears, perusing his metrical relation of the transplanting" and dispersion of that one little community "on the shore of the basin of Minas "I But, alas ! how few recall or realise the fact—if, indeed, aware of it at all— that not one but hunareds of such dispersions, infinitely more tragical, and more romantic, were witnessed in Ireland in the year 1654, when in every hamlet throughout three provinces " the sentence of expulsion was sped from door to door" Longfellow describes to us how the English Captain read aloud to the dismayed and grief-stricken villagers of Grand Pre the decree for their dispersion, unconsciously the poet merely described the form directed by an Act of the English Parliament to be adopted all over Ireland, when « by b,at of drum and sound f trumpet on swine market day, within their respective precincts, the Governor and Commissioners of revenue, or any two or more of them within every precinct " were ordered to publish and proclaim « this present declaration," to wit that " all the ancient estates and farms of the people of Ireland were to belong to the adventurers and the army of England, and that Parliament had assigned Connaught (America was not then accessible) for the habitation of the Irish nation, whitlusr tJiey must transplant ivith t?uvr mvei and daughters and children before the Ist May following ("1654^ under penalty of death, if found on this side of the Shannon after that day. Connaught was selected for the habitation of all the Irish nation, by reason of its being surrounded by the sea and the Shannon all but ten miles, and the whole easily made into line by a tew forts. To further secure the imprisonment of the nation and to cat them off from relief by the sea, a belt four miles wide commencing one mile west of Sligo, and so wending along the *ea coast and the Shannon was reserved by the Act (27th September 1653} from being set out to the Irish, and was to be given to the soldiery to plant. The Irish were not to attempt to pass " the four mile line " as it was called, or to enter a walled town, or to come within five miles of certain specified towns, "on pain of death." All over the land the loud wail of grief and despair resounded for days together It was one universal scene of distracted leave-taking, and then alone every road that led towards Connaught the sorrowing cavalcade! streamed, weary, fainting, and footsore, weeping aloud. Towards the seaports moved other processions of not less mournful character the Irish regiments marching to embark for exile ; or the gaDgs in charge to be transported and sold into slavery in the pestilential settlements of the West Indies. Of young boys and girls alone, Sir William Petty confesses, six thousand were thus transported," but the total number of Irish sent to perish in the tobacco islands, as they were called, were estimated in some Irish accounts at one hundred thousand. Bands of soldiery went about tearing from the arms of their shrieking parents, young childien of ten or twelve years then chaining them in gangs they marched them to the nearest port. Henry Cromwell (Oliver a son), who was most active in the kidnanping of Irish » white Blaves," writing from Ireland to Secretary Thurloe says :-«I think it might be of like advantage to your affairs there and ours here, if you should think to send one thousand five hundred or two thousand young boys of twelve or fourteen years of a»e to the place above-mentioned (West Indies). Who knows but it may be the means to make them Englishmen— l mean rather, Christians^ Thurloe answers : " The committee of the council have voted one thousand girls and *c many youths to be taken up for that purpose." The piety of the amiable kidnapper will be noted. » But," as the author reminds us* • Wa u 8 a l way8 JL° Wlth his clas8 ' wh ether confiscating or transplant' ing, whether robbing the Irish or telling them into slavery, it was always for their spiritual or temporal good-to sanctify or to civilise

(To be continued.')